“O, pardon me!” cried the Colonel. “You have never been expelled from the divinity hall; you have never been broke. I was: broke for a neglect of military duty. To tell you the open truth, your Highness, I was the worse of drink; it’s a thing I never do now,” he added, taking out his glass. “But a man, you see, who has really tasted the defects of his own character, as I have, and has come to regard himself as a kind of blind teetotum knocking about life, begins to learn a very different view about forgiveness. I will talk of not forgiving others, sir, when I have made out to forgive myself, and not before; and the date is like to be a long one. My father, the Reverend Alexander Gordon, was a good man, and damned hard upon others. I am what they call a bad one, and that is just the difference. The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green hand in life.”
“And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist,” said Gotthold.
“A different thing, sir,” replied the soldier. “Professional etiquette. And I trust without unchristian feeling.”
Presently after the Colonel fell into a deep sleep; and his companions looked upon each other, smiling.
“An odd fish,” said Gotthold.
“And a strange guardian,” said the Prince. “Yet what he said was true.”
“Rightly looked upon,” mused Gotthold, “it is ourselves that we cannot forgive, when we refuse forgiveness to our friend. Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.”
“Are there not offences that disgrace the pardoner?” asked Otto. “Are there not bounds of self-respect?”
“Otto,” said Gotthold, “does any man respect himself? To this poor waif of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of deadly weaknesses within?”
“I? yes,” said Otto; “but you, Gotthold—you, with your interminable industry, your keen mind, your books—serving mankind, scorning pleasures and temptations! You do not know how I envy you.”
“Otto,” said the Doctor, “in one word, and a bitter one to say: I am a secret tippler. Yes, I drink too much. The habit has robbed these very books, to which you praise my devotion, of the merits that they should have had. It has spoiled my temper. When I spoke to you the other day, how much of my warmth was in the cause of virtue? how much was the fever of last night’s wine? Ay, as my poor fellow-sot there said, and as I vaingloriously denied, we are all miserable sinners, put here for a moment, knowing the good, choosing the evil, standing naked and ashamed in the eye of God.”
“Is it so?” said Otto. “Why, then, what are we? Are the very best——”
“There is no best in man,” said Gotthold. “I am not better, it is likely I am not worse, than you or that poor sleeper. I was a sham, and now you know me: that is all.”
“And yet it has not changed my love,” returned Otto softly. “Our misdeeds do not change us. Gotthold, fill your glass. Let us drink to what is good in this bad business; let us drink to our old affection; and, when we have done so, forgive your too just grounds of offence, and drink with me to my wife, whom I have so misused, who has so misused me, and whom I have left, I fear, I greatly fear, in danger. What matters it how bad we are, if others can still love us, and we can still love others?”
“Ay!” replied the Doctor. “It is very well said. It is the true answer to the pessimist, and the standing miracle of mankind. So you still love me? and so you can forgive your wife? Why, then, we may bid conscience ’Down, dog,’ like an ill-trained puppy yapping at shadows.”
The pair fell into silence, the Doctor tapping on his empty glass.
The carriage swung forth out of the valleys on that open balcony of high-road that runs along the front of Grünewald, looking down on Gerolstein. Far below, a white waterfall was shining to the stars from the falling skirts of forest, and beyond that, the night stood naked above the plain. On the other hand, the lamplight skimmed the face of the precipices, and the dwarf pine-trees twinkled with all their needles, and were gone again into the wake. The granite roadway thundered under wheels and hoofs; and at times, by reason of its continual winding, Otto could see the escort on the other side of a ravine, riding well together in the night. Presently the Felsenburg came plainly in view, some way above them, on a bold projection of the mountain, and planting its bulk against the starry sky.
“See, Gotthold,” said the Prince, “our destination.”
Gotthold awoke as from a trance.
“I was thinking,” said he, “if there is any danger, why did you not resist? I was told you came of your free will; but should you not be there to help her?”
The colour faded from the Prince’s cheeks.
CHAPTER III
PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE LAST IN WHICH SHE GALLOPS OFF
When the busy Countess came forth from her interview with Seraphina, it is not too much to say that she was beginning to be terribly afraid. She paused in the corridor and reckoned up her doings with an eye to Gondremark. The fan was in requisition in an instant; but her disquiet was beyond the reach of fanning. “The girl has lost her head,” she thought; and then dismally, “I have gone too far.” She instantly decided on secession. Now the Mons Sacer of the Frau von Rosen was a certain rustic villa in the forest, called by herself, in a smart attack of poesy, Tannen Zauber, and by everybody else plain Kleinbrunn.
Thither, upon the thought, she furiously drove, passing Gondremark at the entrance to the palace avenue, but feigning not to observe him; and as Kleinbrunn was seven good miles away, and in the bottom of a narrow dell, she passed the night without any rumour of the outbreak reaching her; and the glow of the conflagration was concealed by intervening hills. Frau von Rosen did not sleep well; she was seriously uneasy as to the results of her delightful evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could venture to return to Gondremark. On the other hand, she examined, by way of pastime, the deeds she had received from Otto; and even here saw cause for disappointment. In these troublous days she had no taste for landed property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than the farm was worth. Lastly, the order for the Prince’s release fairly burned her meddling fingers.
All things considered, the next day beheld an elegant and beautiful lady, in a riding-habit and a flapping hat, draw bridle at the gate of the Felsenburg, not perhaps with any clear idea of her purpose, but with her usual experimental views on life. Governor Gordon, summoned to the gate, welcomed the omnipotent Countess with his most gallant bearing, though it was wonderful how old he looked in the morning.
“Ah, Governor,” she said, “we have surprises for you, sir,” and nodded at him meaningly.
“Eh, madam, leave me my prisoners,” he said; “and if you will but join the band, begad, I’ll be happy for life.”
“You would spoil me, would you not?” she asked.
“I would try, I would try,” returned the Governor, and he offered her his arm.
She took it, picked up her skirt, and drew him close to her. “I have come to see the Prince,” she said. “Now, infidel! on business. A message from that stupid Gondremark, who keeps me running like a courier. Do I look like one, Herr Gordon?” And she planted her eyes in him.
“You look like an angel, ma’am,” returned the Governor, with a great air of finished gallantry.
The Countess laughed. “An angel on horseback!” she said. “Quick work.”
“You came, you saw, you conquered,” flourished Gordon, in high good humour with his own wit and grace. “We toasted you, madam, in the carriage, in an excellent good glass of wine; toasted you fathom deep; the finest woman, with, begad, the finest eyes in Grünewald. I never saw the like of them but once, in my own country, when I was a young fool at College: Thomasina Haig her name was. I give you my word of honour, she was as like you as two peas.”
“And so you were merry in the carriage?” asked the Countess, gracefully dissembling a yawn.
“We were; we had a very pleasant conversation; but we took perhaps a glass more than that fine fellow of a Prince has been accustomed to,” said the Governor; “and I observe this morning that he seems a little off his mettle. We’ll get him mellow again ere bedtime. This is his door.”
“Well,” she whispered, “let me get my breath. No, no; wait. Have the door ready to open.” And the Countess, standing like one inspired, shook out her fine voice in “Lascia ch’io pianga“; and when she had reached the proper point, and lyrically uttered forth her sighings after liberty, the door, at a sign, was flung wide open, and she swam into the Prince’s sight, bright-eyed, and with her colour somewhat freshened by the exercise of singing. It was a great dramatic entrance, and to the somewhat doleful prisoner within the sight was sunshine.
“Ah, madam,” he cried, running to her—“you here!”
She looked meaningly at Gordon; and as soon as the door was closed she fell on Otto’s neck. “To see you here!” she moaned and clung to him.
But the Prince stood somewhat stiffly in that enviable situation, and the Countess instantly recovered from her outburst.
“Poor child,” she said, “poor child! Sit down beside me here, and tell me all about it. My heart really bleeds to see you. How does time go?”
“Madam,” replied the Prince, sitting down beside her, his gallantry recovered, “the time will now go all too quickly till you leave. But I must ask you for the news. I have most bitterly condemned myself for my inertia of last night. You wisely counselled me: it was my duty to resist. You wisely and nobly counselled me; I have since thought of it with wonder. You have a noble heart.”
“Otto,” she said, “spare me. Was it even right, I wonder? I have duties, too, you poor child; and when I see you they all melt—all my good resolutions fly away.”
“And mine still come too late,” he replied, sighing. “O, what would I not give to have resisted? What would I not give for freedom?”
“Well, what would you give?” she asked; and the red fan was spread; only her eyes, as if from over battlements, brightly surveyed him.
“I? What do you mean? Madam, you have some news for me,” he cried.
“O, O!” said madam dubiously.
He was at her feet. “Do not trifle with my hopes,” he pleaded. “Tell me, dearest Madame von Rosen, tell me! You cannot be cruel: it is not in your nature. Give? I can give nothing; I have nothing; I can only plead in mercy.”
“Do not,” she said; “it is not fair. Otto, you know my weakness. Spare me. Be generous.”
“O, madam,” he said, “it is for you to be generous, to have pity.” He took her hand and pressed it; he plied her with caresses and appeals. The Countess had a most enjoyable sham siege, and then relented. She sprang to her feet, she tore her dress open, and, all warm from her bosom, threw the order on the floor.
“There!” she cried. “I forced it from her. Use it, and I am ruined!” And she turned away as if to veil the force of her emotions.
Otto sprang upon the paper, read it, and cried out aloud. “O, God bless her!” he said, “God bless her.” And he kissed the writing.
Von Rosen was a singularly good-natured woman, but her part was now beyond her. “Ingrate!” she cried; “I wrung it from her, I betrayed my trust to get it, and ’tis she you thank!”
“Can you blame me?” said the Prince. “I love her.”
“I see that,” she said. “And I?”
“You, Madame von Rosen? You are my dearest, my kindest, and most generous of friends,” he said, approaching her. “You would be a perfect friend, if you were not so lovely. You have a great sense of humour, you cannot be unconscious of your charm, and you amuse yourself at times by playing on my weakness; and at times I can take pleasure in the comedy. But not to-day: to-day you will be the true, the serious, the manly friend, and you will suffer me to forget that you are lovely and that I am weak. Come, dear Countess, let me to-day repose in you entirely.”
He held out his hand, smiling, and she took it frankly. “I vow you have bewitched me,” she said; and then with a laugh, “I break my staff“! she added; “and I must pay you my best compliment. You made a difficult speech. You are as adroit, dear Prince, as I am—charming.” And as she said the word with a great curtsey, she justified it.
“You hardly keep the bargain, madam, when you make yourself so beautiful,” said the Prince, bowing.
“It was my last arrow,” she returned. “I am disarmed. Blank cartridge, O mon Prince! And now I tell you, if you choose to leave this prison, you can, and I am ruined. Choose!”
“Madame von Rosen,” replied Otto, “I choose, and I will go. My duty points me, duty still neglected by this Featherhead. But do not fear to be a loser. I propose instead that you should take me with you, a bear in chains, to Baron Gondremark. I am become perfectly unscrupulous: to save my wife I will do all, all he can ask or fancy. He shall be filled; were he huge as leviathan and greedy as the grave, I will content him. And you, the fairy of our pantomime, shall have the credit.”
“Done!” she cried. “Admirable! Prince Charming no longer—Prince Sorcerer, Prince Solon! Let us go this moment. Stay,” she cried, pausing. “I beg, dear Prince, to give you back these deeds. ’Twas you who liked the farm—I have not seen it; and it was you who wished to benefit the peasants. And, besides,” she added, with a comical change of tone, “I should prefer the ready money.”
Both laughed. “Here I am, once more a farmer,” said Otto, accepting the papers, “but overwhelmed in debt.”
The Countess touched a bell, and the Governor appeared.
“Governor,” she said, “I am going to elope with his Highness. The result of our talk has been a thorough understanding, and the coup d’état is over. Here is the order.”
Colonel Gordon adjusted silver spectacles upon his nose. “Yes,” he said, “the Princess: very right. But the warrant, madam, was countersigned.”
“By Heinrich!” said von Rosen. “Well, and here am I to represent him.”
“Well, your Highness,” resumed the soldier of fortune, “I must congratulate you upon my loss. You have been cut out by beauty, and I am left lamenting. The Doctor still remains to me: probus, doctus, lepidus, jucundus: a man of books.”
“Ay, there is nothing about poor Gotthold,” said the Prince.
“The Governor’s consolation? Would you leave him bare?” asked von Rosen.
“And, your Highness,” resumed Gordon, “may I trust that in the course of this temporary obscuration, you have found me discharge my part with suitable respect and, I may add, tact? I adopted purposely a cheerfulness of manner; mirth, it appeared to me, and a good glass of wine, were the fit alleviations.”
“Colonel,” said Otto, holding out his hand, “your society was of itself enough. I do not merely thank you for your pleasant spirits; I have to thank you, besides, for some philosophy, of which I stood in need. I trust I do not see you for the last time; and in the meanwhile, as a memento of our strange acquaintance, let me offer you these verses on which I was but now engaged. I am so little of a poet, and was so ill inspired by prison bars, that they have some claim to be at least a curiosity.”
The Colonel’s countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver spectacles were hurriedly replaced. “Ha!” he said, “Alexandrines, the tragic metre. I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. ‘Dieux de l’immense plaine et des vastes forêts.’ Very good,” he said, “very good indeed! ‘Et du geôlier lui-même apprendre des leçons.’ Most handsome, begad!”
“Come, Governor,” cried the Countess, “you can read his poetry when we are gone. Open your grudging portals.”
“I ask your pardon,” said the Colonel. “To a man of my character and tastes, these verses, this handsome reference—most moving, I assure you. Can I offer you an escort?”
“No, no,” replied the Countess. “We go incogniti, as we arrived. We ride together; the Prince will take my servant’s horse. Hurry and privacy, Herr Oberst, that is all we seek.” And she began impatiently to lead the way.
But Otto had still to bid farewell to Dr. Gotthold; and, the Governor following, with his spectacles in one hand and the paper in the other, had still to communicate his treasured verses, piece by piece, as he succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, to all he came across; and still his enthusiasm mounted. “I declare,” he cried at last, with the air of one who has at length divined a mystery, “they remind me of Robbie Burns!”
But there is an end to all things; and at length Otto was walking by the side of Madame von Rosen, along that mountain wall, her servant following with both the horses, and all about them sunlight, and breeze, and flying bird, and the vast regions of the air, and the capacious prospect: wildwood and climbing pinnacle, and the sound and voice of mountain torrents, at their hand; and far below them, green melting into sapphire on the plains.
They walked at first in silence; for Otto’s mind was full of the delight of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his interview with Gondremark. But when the first rough promontory of the rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady paused.
“Here,” she said, “I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our spurs. I love a wild ride with a good companion.”
As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them in the order of the road. It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.
“It is Sir John,” cried Otto, and he hailed him.
The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps. They met at the re-entrant angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much punctilio. To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of sneering wonder.
“Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?” he asked.
“What news?” she cried.
“News of the first order,” returned Sir John: “a revolution in the state, a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in flight, Gondremark wounded——”
“Heinrich wounded?” she screamed.
“Wounded and suffering acutely,” said Sir John. “His groans——”
There fell from the lady’s lips an oath so potent that, in smoother hours, it would have made her hearers jump. She ran to her horse, scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half-seated, dashed down the road at full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage-horses over the verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further and the crags echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and escaped death by a hand’s-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in her pursuit.
“A most impulsive lady!” said Sir John. “Who would have thought she cared for him?” And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in the Prince’s grasp.
“My wife! the Princess? What of her?”
“She is down the road,” he gasped. “I left her twenty minutes back.”
And next moment the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot was racing down the hill behind the Countess.
CHAPTER IV
BABES IN THE WOOD
While the feet of the Prince continued to run swiftly, his heart, which had at first by far outstripped his running, soon began to linger and hang back. Not that he ceased to pity the misfortune or to yearn for the sight of Seraphina; but the memory of her obdurate coldness awoke within him, and woke in turn his own habitual diffidence of self. Had Sir John been given time to tell him all, had he even known that she was speeding to the Felsenburg, he would have gone to her with ardour. As it was, he began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her misfortune, and now that she was fallen, proffering unloved caresses to the wife who had spurned him in prosperity. The sore spots upon his vanity began to burn; once more, his anger assumed the carriage of a hostile generosity; he would utterly forgive indeed; he would help, save, and comfort his unloving wife; but all with distant self-denial, imposing silence on his heart, respecting Seraphina’s disaffection as he would the innocence of a child. So, when at length he turned a corner and beheld the Princess, it was his first thought to reassure her of the purity of his respect, and he at once ceased running and stood still. She, upon her part, began to run to him with a little cry; then, seeing him pause, she paused also, smitten with remorse, and at length, with the most guilty timidity, walked nearly up to where he stood.
“Otto,” she said, “I have ruined all!”
“Seraphina!” he cried with a sob, but did not move, partly withheld by his resolutions, partly struck stupid at the sight of her weariness and disorder. Had she stood silent, they had soon been locked in an embrace. But she too had prepared herself against the interview, and must spoil the golden hour with protestations.
“All!” she went on, “I have ruined all! But, Otto, in kindness you must hear me—not justify, but own, my faults. I have been taught so cruelly; I have had such time for thought, and see the world so changed. I have been blind, stone-blind; I have let all true good go by me, and lived on shadows. But when this dream fell, and I had betrayed you, and thought I had killed——” She paused. “I thought I had killed Gondremark,” she said with a deep flush, “and I found myself alone, as you said.”
The mention of the name of Gondremark pricked the Prince’s generosity like a spur. “Well,” he cried, “and whose fault was it but mine? It was my duty to be beside you, loved or not. But I was a skulker in the grain, and found it easier to desert than to oppose you. I could never learn that better part of love, to fight love’s battles. But yet the love was there. And now when this toy kingdom of ours has fallen, first of all by my demerits, and next by your inexperience, and we are here alone together, as poor as Job and merely a man and a woman—let me conjure you to forgive the weakness and to repose in the love. Do not mistake me!” he cried, seeing her about to speak, and imposing silence with uplifted hand. “My love is changed; it is purged of any conjugal pretension; it does not ask, does not hope, does not wish for a return in kind. You may forget for ever that part in which you found me so distasteful, and accept without embarrassment the affection of a brother.”
“You are too generous, Otto,” she said. “I know that I have forfeited your love. I cannot take this sacrifice. You had far better leave me. O go away, and leave me to my fate!”
“O no!” said Otto; “we must first of all escape out of this hornets’ nest, to which I led you. My honour is engaged. I said but now we were as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my own to which I will conduct you. Otto the Prince being down, we must try what luck remains to Otto the Hunter. Come, Seraphina; show that you forgive me, and let us set about this business of escape in the best spirits possible. You used to say, my dear, that, except as a husband and a prince, I was a pleasant fellow. I am neither now, and you may like my company without remorse. Come, then; it were idle to be captured. Can you still walk? Forth, then,” said he, and he began to lead the way.
A little below where they stood, a good-sized brook passed below the road, which overleapt it in a single arch. On one bank of that loquacious water a footpath descended a green dell. Here it was rocky and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water. The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had wrought. It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver birch. Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte, conducted our two wanderers downward—Otto before, still pausing at the more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following. From time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten upon his—her eyes, half desperately, woo him. He saw, but dare not understand. “She does not love me,” he told himself, with magnanimity. “This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman, no, nor yet a man, if I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.”
Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in a wooden trough. Gaily the pure water, air’s first cousin, fleeted along the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses. The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and wild-rose. And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen; at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke the silence.
The miller, hearing steps, came forth to his door, and both he and Otto started.
“Good morning, miller,” said the Prince. “You were right, it seems, and I was wrong. I give you the news, and bid you to Mittwalden. My throne has fallen—great was the fall of it!—and your good friends of the Phœnix bear the rule.”
The red-faced miller looked supreme astonishment. “And your Highness?” he gasped.
“My Highness is running away,” replied Otto, “straight for the frontier.”
“Leaving Grünewald?” cried the man. “Your father’s son? It’s not to be permitted!”
“Do you arrest us, friend?” asked Otto, smiling.
“Arrest you? I?” exclaimed the man. “For what does your Highness take me? Why, sir, I make sure there is not a man in Grünewald would lay hands upon you.”
“O, many, many,” said the Prince; “but from you, who were bold with me in my greatness, I should even look for aid in my distress.”
The miller became the colour of beetroot. “You may say so indeed,” said he. “And meanwhile, will you and your lady step into my house?”
“We have not time for that,” replied the Prince; “but if you would oblige us with a cup of wine without here, you will give a pleasure and a service, both in one.”
The miller once more coloured to the nape. He hastened to bring forth wine in a pitcher and three bright crystal tumblers. “Your Highness must not suppose,” he said, as he filled them, “that I am an habitual drinker. The time when I had the misfortune to encounter you, I was a trifle overtaken, I allow; but a more sober man than I am in my ordinary, I do not know where you are to look for; and even this glass that I drink to you (and to the lady) is quite an unusual recreation.”
The wine was drunk with due rustic courtesies; and then, refusing further hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend the glen, which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.
“I owed that man a reparation,” said the Prince; “for when we met I was in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him. I judge by myself, perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a humiliation.”
“But some have to be taught so,” she replied.
“Well, well,” he said, with a painful embarrassment. “Well, well. But let us think of safety. My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my faith to him. To follow down this stream will bring us, but after innumerable windings, to my house. Here, up this glade, there lies a cross-cut—the world’s end for solitude—the very deer scarce visit it. Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?”
“Choose the path, Otto. I will follow you,” she said.
“No,” he replied, with a singular imbecility of manner and appearance, “but I meant the path was rough. It lies, all the way, by glade and dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.”
“Lead on,” she said. “Are you not Otto the Hunter?”
They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by trees. Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes. A weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like beginnings of sleep; the cords of his activity were relaxed, his eyes clung to her. “Let us rest,” he said; and he made her sit down, and himself sat down beside her on the slope of an inconsiderable mound.
She sat with her eyes downcast, her slim hand dabbling in grass, like a maid waiting for love’s summons. The sound of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its kindly adversary.
“Seraphina,” he said at last, “it is right you should know one thing: I never....” He was about to say “doubted you,” but was that true? And, if true, was it generous to speak of it? Silence succeeded.
“I pray you, tell it me,” she said; “tell it me, in pity.”
“I mean only this,” he resumed, “that I understand all, and do not blame you. I understand how the brave woman must look down on the weak man. I think you were wrong in some things; but I have tried to understand it, and I do. I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have understood.”
“I know what I have done,” she said. “I am not so weak that I can be deceived with kind speeches. I know what I have been—I see myself. I am not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven! In all this downfall and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have been always; me, as I was—me, above all! O yes, I see myself; and what can I think?”
“Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!” said Otto. “It is ourselves we cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another—so a friend told me last night. On these terms, Seraphina, you see how generously I have forgiven myself. But am not I to be forgiven? Come, then, forgive yourself—and me.”
She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him quickly. He took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled in his, love ran to and fro between them in tender and transforming currents.
“Seraphina,” he cried, “O forget the past! Let me serve and help you; let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to be near you; let me be near you, dear—do not send me away.” He hurried his pleading like the speech of a frightened child. “It is not love,” he went on; “I do not ask for love; my love is enough....”
“Otto!” she said, as if in pain.
He looked up into her face. It was wrung with the very ecstasy of tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed eyes, there shone the very light of love.
“Seraphina?” he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice, “Seraphina?”
“Look round you at this glade,” she cried, “and where the leaves are coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is where we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to be born again. O what a pit there is for sins—God’s mercy, man’s oblivion!”
“Seraphina,” he said, “let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I have dreamed in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and beautiful; in all things my superior, but still cold, like ice. And again I dreamed, and thought she changed and melted, glowed and turned to me. And I—who had no merit but a love, slavish and unerect—lay close, and durst not move for fear of waking.”
“Lie close,” she said, with a deep thrill of speech.
So they spake in the spring woods; and meanwhile, in Mittwalden Rath-haus, the Republic was declared.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL POSTSCRIPT
TO COMPLETE THE STORY
The reader well informed in modern history will not require details as to the fate of the Republic. The best account is to be found in the memoirs of Herr Greisengesang (7 Bände: Leipzig), by our passing acquaintance the licentiate Roederer. Herr Roederer, with too much of an author’s licence, makes a great figure of his hero—poses him, indeed, to be the centrepiece and cloud-compeller of the whole. But, with due allowance for this bias, the book is able and complete.
The reader is of course acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of Sir John (2 vols.: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown). Sir John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon. His character is there drawn at large; and the sympathy of Landor has countersigned the admiration of the public. One point, however, calls for explanation; the chapter on Grünewald was torn by the hand of the author in the palace gardens; how comes it, then, to figure at full length among my more modest pages, the Lion of the caravan? That eminent literatus was a man of method; “Juvenal by double entry,” he was once profanely called; and when he tore the sheets in question, it was rather, as he has since explained, in the search for some dramatic evidence of his sincerity, than with the thought of practical deletion. At that time, indeed, he was possessed of two blotted scrolls and a fair copy in double. But the chapter, as the reader knows, was honestly omitted from the famous “Memoirs on the various Courts of Europe.” It has been mine to give it to the public.
Bibliography still helps us with a further glimpse of our characters. I have here before me a small volume (printed for private circulation: no printer’s name; n.d.), “Poésies par Frédéric et Amélie.” Mine is a presentation copy, obtained for me by Mr. Bain in the Haymarket; and the name of the first owner is written on the fly-leaf in the hand of Prince Otto himself. The modest epigraph—“Le rime n’est pas riche”—may be attributed, with a good show of likelihood, to the same collaborator. It is strikingly appropriate, and I have found the volume very dreary. Those pieces in which I seem to trace the hand of the Princess are particularly dull and conscientious. But the booklet had a fair success with that public for which it was designed; and I have come across some evidences of a second venture of the same sort, now unprocurable. Here, at least, we may take leave of Otto and Seraphina—what do I say? of Frédéric and Amélie—ageing together peaceably at the court of the wife’s father, jingling French rhymes and correcting joint proofs.
Still following the book-lists, I perceive that Mr. Swinburne has dedicated a rousing lyric and some vigorous sonnets to the memory of Gondremark; that name appears twice at least in Victor Hugo’s trumpet-blasts of patriot enumeration; and I came latterly, when I supposed my task already ended, on a trace of the fallen politician and his Countess. It is in the “Diary of J. Hogg Cotterill, Esq.” (that very interesting work). Mr. Cotterill, being at Naples, is introduced (May 27th) to “a Baron and Baroness Gondremark—he a man who once made a noise—she still beautiful—both witty. She complimented me much upon my French—should never have known me to be English—had known my uncle, Sir John, in Germany—recognised in me, as a family trait, some of his grand air and studious courtesy—asked me to call.” And again (May 30th), “visited the Baronne de Gondremark—much gratified—a most refined, intelligent woman, quite of the old school, now, hélas! extinct—had read my ‘Remarks on Sicily’—it reminds her of my uncle, but with more of grace—I feared she thought there was less energy—assured no—a softer style of presentation, more of the literary grace, but the same first grasp of circumstance and force of thought—in short, just Buttonhole’s opinion. Much encouraged. I have a real esteem for this patrician lady.” The acquaintance lasted some time; and when Mr. Cotterill left in the suite of Lord Protocol, and, as he is careful to inform us, in Admiral Yardarm’s flagship, one of his chief causes of regret is to leave “that most spirituelle and sympathetic lady, who already regards me as a younger brother.”
THE WRONG BOX
WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH LLOYD OSBOURNE
PREFACE
“Nothing like a little judicious levity,” says Michael Finsbury in the text: nor can any better excuse be found for the volume in the reader’s hand. The authors can but add that one of them is old enough to be ashamed of himself, and the other young enough to learn better.
R. L. S.
L. O.
THE WRONG BOX
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH MORRIS SUSPECTS
How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours of toil, consultation of authorities, researches in the Bodleian, correspondence with learned and illegible Germans—in one word, the vast scaffolding that was first built up and then knocked down, to while away an hour for him in a railway train! Thus I might begin this tale with a biography of Tonti—birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited from his mother, remarkable instance of precocity, etc.—and a complete treatise on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious. Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him; and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes of this unvarnished narrative.
A number of sprightly youths (the more the merrier) put up a certain sum of money, which is then funded in a pool under trustees; coming on for a century later, the proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of the last survivor, who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of his success—and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well have lost. The peculiar poetry and even humour of the scheme is now apparent, since it is one by which nobody concerned can possibly profit; but its fine, sportsmanlike character endeared it to our grand-parents.
When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads in white-frilled trousers, their father—a well-to-do merchant in Cheapside—caused them to join a small but rich tontine of seven-and-thirty lives. A thousand pounds was the entrance fee; and Joseph Finsbury can remember to this day the visit to the lawyer’s, where the members of the tontine—all children like himself—were assembled together, and sat in turn in the big office chair, and signed their names with the assistance of a kind old gentleman in spectacles and Wellington boots. He remembers playing with the children afterwards on the lawn at the back of the lawyer’s house, and a battle-royal that he had with a brother tontiner who had kicked his shins. The sound of war called forth the lawyer from where he was dispensing cake and wine to the assembled parents in the office, and the combatants were separated, and Joseph’s spirit (for he was the smaller of the two) commended by the gentleman in the Wellington boots, who vowed he had been just such another at the same age. Joseph wondered to himself if he had worn at that time little Wellingtons and a little bald head, and when, in bed at night, he grew tired of telling himself stories of sea-fights, he used to dress himself up as the old gentleman, and entertain other little boys and girls with cake and wine.
In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their number had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more lively, for the Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than nine. There remained in 1870 but five of the original members, and at the date of my story, including the two Finsburys, but three.
By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long complained of the effects of age, had long since retired from business, and now lived in absolute seclusion under the roof of his son Michael, the well-known solicitor. Joseph, on the other hand, was still up and about, and still presented but a semi-venerable figure on the streets in which he loved to wander. This was the more to be deplored because Masterman had led (even to the least particular) a model British life. Industry, regularity, respectability, and a preference for the four per cents. are understood to be the very foundations of a green old age. All these Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he was, ab agendo, at seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years younger, and in the most excellent preservation, had disgraced himself through life by idleness and eccentricity. Embarked in the leather trade, he had early wearied of business, for which he was supposed to have small parts. A taste for general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind, unless, perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case of Joseph; the acute stage of this double malady, that in which the patient delivers gratuitous lectures, soon declared itself with severity, and not many years had passed over his head before he would have travelled thirty miles to address an infant school. He was no student; his reading was confined to elementary text-books and the daily papers; he did not even fly as high as cyclopædias; life, he would say, was his volume. His lectures were not meant, he would declare, for college professors; they were addressed direct to “the great heart of the people,” and the heart of the people must certainly be sounder than its head, for his lucubrations were received with favour. That entitled, “How to Live Cheerfully on Forty Pounds a Year,” created a sensation among the unemployed. “Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability,” gained him the respect of the shallow-minded. As for his celebrated essay on “Life Insurance Regarded in its Relation to the Masses,” read before the Working Men’s Mutual Improvement Society, Isle of Dogs, it was received with a “literal ovation” by an unintelligent audience of both sexes, and so marked was the effect that he was next year elected honorary president of the institution, an office of less than no emolument—since the holder was expected to come down with a donation—but one which highly satisfied his self-esteem.
While Joseph was thus building himself up a reputation among the more cultivated portion of the ignorant, his domestic life was suddenly overwhelmed by orphans. The death of his younger brother Jacob saddled him with the charge of two boys, Morris and John; and in the course of the same year his family was still further swelled by the addition of a little girl, the daughter of John Henry Hazeltine, Esq., a gentleman of small property and fewer friends. He had met Joseph only once, at a lecture-hall in Holloway; but from that formative experience he returned home to make a new will, and consign his daughter and her fortune to the lecturer. Joseph had a kindly disposition; and yet it was not without reluctance that he accepted this new responsibility, advertised for a nurse, and purchased a second-hand perambulator. Morris and John he made more readily welcome; not so much because of the tie of consanguinity as because the leather business (in which he hastened to invest their fortune of thirty thousand pounds) had recently exhibited inexplicable symptoms of decline. A young but capable Scot was chosen as manager to the enterprise, and the cares of business never again afflicted Joseph Finsbury. Leaving his charges in the hands of the capable Scot (who was married), he began his extensive travels on the Continent and in Asia Minor.
With a polyglot Testament in one hand and a phrase-book in the other, he groped his way among the speakers of eleven European languages. The first of these guides is hardly applicable to the purposes of the philosophic traveller, and even the second is designed more expressly for the tourist than for the expert in life. But he pressed interpreters into his service—whenever he could get their services for nothing—and by one means and another filled many note-books with the results of his researches.
In these wanderings he spent several years, and only returned to England when the increasing age of his charges needed his attention. The two lads had been placed in a good but economical school, where they had received a sound commercial education; which was somewhat awkward, as the leather business was by no means in a state to court inquiry. In fact, when Joseph went over his accounts preparatory to surrendering his trust, he was dismayed to discover that his brother’s fortune had not increased by his stewardship; even by making over to his two wards every penny he had in the world, there would still be a deficit of seven thousand eight hundred pounds. When these facts were communicated to the two brothers in the presence of a lawyer, Morris Finsbury threatened his uncle with all the terrors of the law, and was only prevented from taking extreme steps by the advice of the professional man.
“You cannot get blood from a stone,” observed the lawyer.
And Morris saw the point and came to terms with his uncle. On the one side, Joseph gave up all that he possessed, and assigned to his nephew his contingent interest in the tontine, already quite a hopeful speculation. On the other, Morris agreed to harbour his uncle and Miss Hazeltine (who had come to grief with the rest), and to pay to each of them one pound a month as pocket-money. The allowance was amply sufficient for the old man; it scarce appears how Miss Hazeltine contrived to dress upon it; but she did, and, what is more, she never complained. She was, indeed, sincerely attached to her incompetent guardian. He had never been unkind; his age spoke for him loudly; there was something appealing in his whole-souled quest of knowledge and innocent delight in the smallest mark of admiration; and, though the lawyer had warned her she was being sacrificed, Julia had refused to add to the perplexities of Uncle Joseph.
In a large, dreary house in John Street, Bloomsbury, these four dwelt together; a family in appearance, in reality a financial association. Julia and Uncle Joseph were, of course, slaves; John, a gentleman with a taste for the banjo, the music-hall, the Gaiety bar, and the sporting papers, must have been anywhere a secondary figure; and the cares and delights of empire devolved entirely upon Morris. That these are inextricably intermixed is one of the commonplaces with which the bland essayist consoles the incompetent and the obscure, but in the case of Morris the bitter must have largely outweighed the sweet. He grudged no trouble to himself, he spared none to others; he called the servants in the morning, he served out the stores with his own hand, he took soundings of the sherry, he numbered the remainder biscuits; painful scenes took place over the weekly bills, and the cook was frequently impeached, and the tradespeople came and hectored with him in the back parlour upon a question of three farthings. The superficial might have deemed him a miser; in his own eyes he was simply a man who had been defrauded; the world owed him seven thousand eight hundred pounds, and he intended that the world should pay.
But it was in his dealings with Joseph that Morris’s character particularly shone. His uncle was a rather gambling stock in which he had invested heavily; and he spared no pains in nursing the security. The old man was seen monthly by a physician, whether he was well or ill. His diet, his raiment, his occasional outings, now to Brighton, now to Bournemouth, were doled out to him like pap to infants. In bad weather he must keep the house. In good weather, by half-past nine, he must be ready in the hall; Morris would see that he had gloves and that his shoes were sound; and the pair would start for the leather business arm in arm. The way there was probably dreary enough, for there was no pretence of friendly feeling; Morris had never ceased to upbraid his guardian with his defalcation and to lament the burthen of Miss Hazeltine; and Joseph, though he was a mild enough soul, regarded his nephew with something very near akin to hatred. But the way there was nothing to the journey back; for the mere sight of the place of business, as well as every detail of its transactions, was enough to poison life for any Finsbury.
Joseph’s name was still over the door; it was he who still signed the cheques; but this was only policy on the part of Morris, and designed to discourage other members of the tontine. In reality the business was entirely his; and he found it an inheritance of sorrows. He tried to sell it, and the offers he received were quite derisory. He tried to extend it, and it was only the liabilities he succeeded in extending; to restrict it, and it was only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody had ever made money out of that concern except the capable Scot, who retired (after his discharge) to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a castle with his profits. The memory of this fallacious Caledonian Morris would revile daily, as he sat in the private office opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table, sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not what. And when the man of the heather pushed cynicism so far as to send him the announcement of his second marriage (to Davida, eldest daughter of the Rev. Alexander McCraw), it was really supposed that Morris would have had a fit.
Business hours, in the Finsbury leather trade, had been cut to the quick; even Morris’s strong sense of duty to himself was not strong enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of that bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long breath, and compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay; but the Business Habits are certainly her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather merchant would lead his living investment back to John Street like a puppy dog; and, having there immured him in the hall, would depart for the day on the quest of seal rings, the only passion of his life. Joseph had more than the vanity of man, he had that of lecturers. He owned he was in fault, although more sinned against (by the capable Scot) than sinning; but had he steeped his hands in gore, he would still not deserve to be thus dragged at the chariot-wheels of a young man, to sit a captive in the halls of his own leather business, to be entertained with mortifying comments on his whole career—to have his costume examined, his collar pulled up, the presence of his mittens verified, and to be taken out and brought home in custody, like an infant with a nurse. At the thought of it his soul would swell with venom, and he would make haste to hang up his hat and coat and the detested mittens, and slink upstairs to Julia and his note-books. The drawing-room at least was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man and the young girl; it was there that she made her dresses; it was there that he inked his spectacles over the registration of disconnected facts and the calculation of insignificant statistics.
Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine. “If it were not for that,” he cried one afternoon, “he would not care to keep me. I might be a free man, Julia. And I could so easily support myself by giving lectures.”
“To be sure you could,” said she; “and I think it one of the meanest things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement. There were those nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn’t it?) who wrote and asked you so very kindly to give them an address. I did think he might have let you go to the Isle of Cats.”
“He is a man of no intelligence,” cried Joseph. “He lives here literally surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for all the good it does him, he might just as well be in his coffin. Think of his opportunities! The heart of any other young man would burn within him at the chance. The amount of information that I have it in my power to convey, if he would only listen, is a thing that beggars language, Julia.”
“Whatever you do, my dear, you mustn’t excite yourself,” said Julia; “for you know, if you look at all ill, the doctor will be sent for.”
“That is very true,” returned the old man humbly, “I will compose myself with a little study.” He thumbed his gallery of note-books. “I wonder,” he said, “I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether it might not interest you——”
“Why, of course it would,” cried Julia. “Read me one of your nice stories, there’s a dear!”
He had the volume down and his spectacles upon his nose instanter, as though to forestall some possible retractation. “What I propose to read to you,” said he, skimming through the pages, “is the notes of a highly important conversation with a Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas, which is the Latin for abbot. Its results are well worth the money it cost me, for, as Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was induced to (what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It runs only to about five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is.” He cleared his throat, and began to read.
Mr. Finsbury (according to his own report) contributed about four hundred and ninety-nine five-hundredths of the interview, and elicited from Abbas literally nothing. It was dull for Julia, who did not require to listen; for the Dutch courier, who had to answer, it must have been a perfect nightmare. It would seem as if he had consoled himself by frequent appliances to the bottle; it would even seem that (toward the end) he had ceased to depend on Joseph’s frugal generosity and called for the flagon on his own account. The effect, at least, of some mellowing influence was visible in the record: Abbas became suddenly a willing witness; he began to volunteer disclosures; and Julia had just looked up from her seam with something like a smile, when Morris burst into the house, eagerly calling for his uncle, and the next instant plunged into the room, waving in the air the evening paper.
It was indeed with great news that he came charged. The demise was announced of Lieutenant-General Sir Glasgow Biggar, K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G., etc., and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here was Morris’s opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with irritation. “I call it simply indecent,” he had said. “Mark my words—we shall hear of him next at the North Pole.” And these bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the lecture on “Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability,” although invited to the platform. Since then the brothers had not met. On the other hand, they never had openly quarrelled; Joseph (by Morris’s orders) was prepared to waive the advantage of his juniority; Masterman had enjoyed all through life the reputation of a man neither greedy nor unfair. Here, then, were all the elements of compromise assembled; and Morris, suddenly beholding his seven thousand eight hundred pounds restored to him, and himself dismissed from the vicissitudes of the leather trade, hastened the next morning to the office of his cousin Michael.
Michael was something of a public character. Launched upon the law at a very early age, and quite without protectors, he had become a trafficker in shady affairs. He was known to be the man for a lost cause; it was known he could extract testimony from a stone, and interest from a gold mine; and his office was besieged in consequence by all that numerous class of persons who have still some reputation to lose, and find themselves upon the point of losing it; by those who have made undesirable acquaintances, who have mislaid a compromising correspondence, or who are blackmailed by their own butlers. In private life Michael was a man of pleasure; but it was thought his dire experience at the office had gone far to sober him, and it was known that (in the matter of investments) he preferred the solid to the brilliant. What was yet more to the purpose, he had been all his life a consistent scoffer at the Finsbury tontine.
It was therefore with little fear for the result that Morris presented himself before his cousin, and proceeded feverishly to set forth his scheme. For near upon a quarter of an hour the lawyer suffered him to dwell upon its manifest advantages uninterrupted. Then Michael rose from his seat, and, ringing for his clerk, uttered a single clause:
“It won’t do, Morris.”
It was in vain that the leather merchant pleaded and reasoned, and returned day after day to plead and reason. It was in vain that he offered a bonus of one thousand, of two thousand, of three thousand pounds; in vain that he offered, in Joseph’s name, to be content with only one-third of the pool. Still there came the same answer: “It won’t do.”
“I can’t see the bottom of this,” he said at last. “You answer none of my arguments; you haven’t a word to say. For my part, I believe it’s malice.”
The lawyer smiled at him benignly. “You may believe one thing,” said he. “Whatever else I do, I am not going to gratify any of your curiosity. You see I am a trifle more communicative to-day, because this is our last interview upon the subject.”
“Our last interview!” cried Morris.
“The stirrup-cup, dear boy,” returned Michael. “I can’t have my business hours encroached upon. And, by the by, have you no business of your own? Are there no convulsions in the leather trade?”
“I believe it to be malice,” repeated Morris doggedly. “You always hated and despised me from a boy.”
“No, no—not hated,” returned Michael soothingly. “I rather like you than otherwise; there’s such a permanent surprise about you, you look so dark and attractive from a distance. Do you know that to the naked eye you look romantic?—like what they call a man with a history? And indeed, from all that I can hear, the history of the leather trade is full of incident.”
“Yes,” said Morris, disregarding these remarks, “it’s no use coming here. I shall see your father.”
“O no, you won’t,” said Michael. “Nobody shall see my father.”
“I should like to know why,” cried his cousin.
“I never make any secret of that,” replied the lawyer. “He is too ill.”
“If he is as ill as you say,” cried the other, “the more reason for accepting my proposal. I will see him.”
“Will you?” said Michael, and he rose and rang for his clerk.
It was now time, according to Sir Faraday Bond, the medical baronet whose name is so familiar at the foot of bulletins, that Joseph (the poor Golden Goose) should be removed into the purer air of Bournemouth; and for that uncharted wilderness of villas the family now shook off the dust of Bloomsbury; Julia delighted, because at Bournemouth she sometimes made acquaintances; John in despair, for he was a man of city tastes; Joseph indifferent where he was, so long as there was pen and ink and daily papers, and he could avoid martyrdom at the office; Morris himself, perhaps, not displeased to pretermit these visits to the city, and have a quiet time for thought. He was prepared for any sacrifice; all he desired was to get his money again and clear his feet of leather; and it would be strange, since he was so modest in his desires, and the pool amounted to upward of a hundred and sixteen thousand pounds—it would be strange indeed if he could find no way of influencing Michael. “If I could only guess his reason,” he repeated to himself; and by day, as he walked in Branksome Woods, and by night, as he turned upon his bed, and at meal-times, when he forgot to eat, and in the bathing machine, when he forgot to dress himself, that problem was constantly before him: Why had Michael refused?
At last, one night, he burst into his brother’s room and woke him.
“What’s all this?” asked John.
“Julia leaves this place to-morrow,” replied Morris. “She must go up to town and get the house ready, and find servants. We shall all follow in three days.”
“Oh, brayvo!” cried John. “But why?”
“I’ve found it out, John,” returned his brother gently.
“It? What?” inquired John.
“Why Michael won’t compromise,” said Morris. “It’s because he can’t. It’s because Masterman’s dead, and he’s keeping it dark.”
“Golly!” cried the impressionable John. “But what’s the use? Why does he do it, anyway?”
“To defraud us of the tontine,” said his brother.
“He couldn’t; you have to have a doctor’s certificate,” objected John.
“Did you never hear of venal doctors?” inquired Morris. “They’re as common as blackberries: you can pick ’em up for three-pound-ten a head.”
“I wouldn’t do it under fifty if I were a sawbones,” ejaculated John.
“And then Michael,” continued Morris, “is in the very thick of it. All his clients have come to grief; his whole business is rotten eggs. If any man could arrange it, he could; and depend upon it, he has his plan all straight; and depend upon it, it’s a good one, for he’s clever, and be damned to him! But I’m clever too; and I’m desperate. I lost seven thousand eight hundred pounds when I was an orphan at school.”
“O, don’t be tedious,” interrupted John. “You’ve lost far more already trying to get it back.”